How to Lock Apps on iPhone With Touch ID

Since its introduction in the iPhone 5s, the Touch ID has already rolled through a couple of iterations. Apple has taken a lot of efforts in integrating Touch ID seamlessly across the iPhone — whether it be unlocking your iPhone, buying from iTunes or using Apple Pay. My only pet peeve about Touch ID is the inability to lock individual apps on my iPhone. This ability is particularly useful when I need to hand over my unlocked iPhone, without having to constantly worry about the other person going through my personal photos or other confidential data. Thankfully, you can use a jailbreak tweak to accomplish the same. So, today I’ll show you how to lock apps on your iPhone with Touch ID:

Download BioLockdown to Lock Apps on iPhone

Note: I’ve tested this tweak on an iPhone 6 running jailbroken iOS 10.2 and can confirm that it works. It should work on other jailbroken iOS devices, too. If you are looking to jailbreak your iPhone, you can check out our guide on how you can jailbreak iOS 10.2. There’s no way to lock apps on non-jailbroken iPhones but there are ways to hide apps.

Open Cydia > Search and search for “BioLockdown” (without the quotes).

Because this tweak is hosted in the BigBoss repo, you do not need to add a custom source.

Tap on “Purchase“. BioLockDown costs $2.99 (and is worth every penny). The payment is done through PayPal.

Tap “Restart SpringBoard“.

Your device should respring in a few seconds and BioLockdown should be successfully installed.

How to Use BioLockdown to Lock Apps and Settings

BioLockdown uses the fingerprints that you’ve already registered in your Touch ID settings. So, if you haven’t already, go to “Settings” > “Touch ID & Passcode” > “Add a Fingerprint…” and register a fingerprint here. The app also works with the passcode, so you can use that as well.

Now we can continue to explore all the features that BioLockDown has to offer by going to “Settings” > “BioLockDown”.

To lock down a particular app, tap on “New restriction“.

This will pop-up a new menu where you can select any system/third-party app(s) or folder(s) that you want to lock down with Touch ID. Folders don’t seem to work for now, but the developer has promised a fix soon.

Under the “Switches” tab, you can lock down certain Control Center toggles like the Airplane mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.

Under the “Settings Pane” tab, you can choose to lock a particular settings pane like General, Wallpaper, Siri, etc. I’d recommend you to lock the “BioLockDown” menu itself in the Settings so that nobody can tamper its settings or remove the lock from apps.

Finally, the “Features” tab enables you to lock certain other aspects of your iPhone like answering/placing a call, notification/Control Center, Siri, Spotlight, Power Off Device, etc.

If you have jailbroken iOS 10.2 using Yalu, I strongly recommend you to lock “Power Off Device”, so that it prompts you for fingerprint authorization when you want to power off your device. There’s a simple reason behind it: The jailbreak available currently is a semi-tethered jailbreak and by restarting your device, the jailbreak will be lost. Hence, if someone’s smart enough to know this, they can quickly restart your iPhone, thus losing your jailbreak and rendering BioLockDown and all the tweaks useless.

Lock iPhone Apps using BioLockDown

Using BioLockdown, you can easily protect individual apps, settings, Control Center toggles, and more, with Touch ID. One important thing to note that home button replacement apps like Touchr or Virtual home could interfere with it, so make sure that you disable similar apps for now. Locking a folder doesn’t seem to work for now and the developer says that he’s working on a fix. Other than this, it works like a charm.

Give BioLockDown a shot and let me know how it goes for you. Also, if you use similar apps, feel free to suggest it to our fellow readers in the comments section below.